What saddens me is that it's not as lucid as it used to be, that the automated citizen allocation only seems to focus on food production and nothing else, and that the AI can be plain stupid at times, despite your chosen difficulty.

I don't find the AI particularly dull on the higher difficulties, and the automation will favor food over any other, but you are free to toggle to a different city focus, and the city will adjuster their workers to fit that. Also, manual allocation is still allowed.

Also... Germany's ability, Furor Teutonicus, is only useful in the early stage of the game, and then it's debatable. I cleared well over a dozen barbarian encampments, defeating a barbarian unit that was stationed on a camp, and only got 2 units to join me despite the 50% rate... very disappointing.